Using Model - Pre WWI

About Uncle Sam

James Montgomery Flagg (my Grandfather) created the original Uncle Sam "I Want You". Although most researches will refer to JMF as the model of his original Uncle Sam, nothing could be farther from the truth. My Mother tried her adult life to correct this error, and I will carry on this monumental task.

In 1916, JMF reluctantly accepted a 4th of July project by Leslie Magazine, and eventually found his Uncle Sam one rainy night on a train bound for Parris Island, where he was to unveil a portrait of the Commandant.

His "symbol of our country" was a young, roughly 17 year old, Marine, which he considered the finest branch of our armed forces. He was able to acquire a 24 hour pass for this "boot" not normally allowed off base, and he aged his model's adolescent face by forty years and turned a circus clown's costume into symbolic dignity (as told to me and written by his daughter, my mother, Faith).

This cover was eventually made into a recruiting poster, at the request of the State Dept, and is now recognized as the most famous war poster of our time.

By WWII, JMF had ironically begun to look remarkably like his original Uncle Sam, and he did indeed use his mirror image in several new posters. When FDR is quoted as saying "saving model hire" in a personal letter to JMF, he is referring to the 2nd World War posters.

Faith would say, "I thought you might find the facts more fun than the fantasies."

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Monday, August 31, 2009

As for being on hold: I apologize if, during my tenure as a staffer on Capitol Hill, I was the one who stuck you there. But at least you can say that the music you heard was the sort that Americans have stood up and taken their hats off to over the years, as opposed to the kind designed to put older constituents to sleep. If the death panels won’t do it, the congressional hold music will.

The attacks on 9-11-2001 were devasting, and significant steps were taken in order to prevent other attacks on our country. The CIA took carefully researched and planned steps to successfully protect America.

Omaba has again gone back on his word, and this time puts our national security in jeopardy. The Heritage Foundation reports:

Politics Before Justice at Obama’s DOJAugust 31, 2009

On Friday of last week, following the announcement that Attorney General Eric Holder would appoint a prosecutor to re-investigate the CIA’s treatment of detainees, former Vice President Dick Cheney taped an interview with Fox News. During the interview, which aired yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Cheney describes Holder’s decision as an “outrageous political act” that will have “devastating” consequences within the CIA.

Cheney is dead on. But unfortunately Holder’s political CIA witch hunt is just the latest example of a troubling pattern of politicization of the Justice Department under Holder.

Voter Intimidation: On Election Day 2008, members of the New Black Panther Party dressed in military-style uniforms were filmed standing outside a polling place in Philadelphia. According to a complaint filed by career lawyers at the Justice Department, the New Black Panther Party violated section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act by engaging “in coercion, threats, and intimidation” of voters, including “racial threats and racial insults” as well as brandishing “a deadly weapon.”

Public Corruption: In 2008, a federal grand jury began an investigation into a possible pay-to-play scheme in which lucrative work on New Mexico bond deals went to a Gov. Bill Richardson (D) donor. But then just last week, news leaked that that no one would be charged in the investigation with sources telling the Associated Press: “It’s over. There’s nothing. It was killed in Washington.” Heritage senior legal fellow Hans von Spakovsky explains why this is so troubling: “For anyone familiar with internal Justice Department procedures, this is particularly suspicious. The DOJ has a manual called “Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses” (I helped edit the latest edition when I was at Justice) that sets out the rules and procedures for U.S. attorneys when they are investigating these types of public-corruption cases. It is the U.S. attorney in New Mexico who would normally make the final call on a local public-corruption case, not ‘top Justice Department officials’ in Washington.”

Undermining National Security: In 2004 the CIA Inspector General issued a report documenting alleged detainee abuse by CIA interrogators and contractors. The DOJ’s career, not political, prosecutors then examined that document and other incidents from Iraq and Afghanistan for legal accountability. In one case, the DOJ decided to prosecute, and has already obtained a criminal conviction of a CIA contractor. Furthermore, the CIA has also taken their own disciplinary action against others involved in the incidents. As Heritage senior fellow Peter Brookes explains, Holder’s decision to re-investigate the CIA will have a chilling effect on the morale at the agency and will leave officers in the field wondering whether they should be more concerned about getting terrorists or getting lawyers.

Anyone familiar with Holder’s history should not be surprised by the politicization of the Justice Department under his leadership. In 1999, Holder promoted clemency for 16 members of FALN and Los Macheteros, terrorist organizations linked by the FBI to more than 130 bombings and six murders. Then in 2000 Holder played a prominent role in the pardon of Marc Rich, whose ex-wife gave considerable sums to the Democratic Party ($867,000) and the Clinton Library ($450,000).

Now, as the head of DOJ, Holder’s political decisions are undermining core rule of law concerns including the integrity of elections, ethical governance, and national security. Holder reports directly to his boss, President Barack Obama. Someone needs to be held accountable.

QUICK HIT

According to Rasmussen Reports, 57% of Americans would vote to replace the entire Congress and start all over again.

I didn’t go to Senator Kennedy’s funeral. I attended another one instead. Actually, the funeral I attended was on Friday – the day before Senator Kennedy’s.

The funeral I attended was for Staff Sergeant Clayton P. Bowen, 29 of San Antonio, Texas. SSG Bowen and another soldier, Pfc. Morris L. Walker, 23 of Chapel Hill, N.C. were killed on Aug. 18 in Paktika Province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near their vehicle. SSG Bowen’s funeral was held at the Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery.

I am proud to ride motorcycles with an interesting assortment of individuals called the Patriot Guard Riders (“www.patriotguard.org”). We attend funerals to honor current and former members of United States Military. Most of us are veterans. Some still serve on active duty. Many are just caring civilians who want to pay tribute to the service and sacrifice of veterans.

I happened to be listening to my IPOD while riding in SSG Bowen’s funeral procession. As we approached the National Cemetery at Ft. Sam, I heard Johnny Cash’s rendition of the Tom Petty song “I won’t back down”. You’ve probably heard the song – it goes “Well I won’t back down, no I won’t back down. You can stand me up at the gates of hell but I wont back down.”

As I listened to those lyrics, I started to think about the type of service that SSG Bowen and his comrades render to our country. I started to contrast SSG Bowen’s service to that of Senator Kennedy’s.

I have never been a fan of Senator Kennedy’s politics; however it was clear that he was widely respected as a senator and legislator. Over the last several days, I have heard and read numerous stories about his illustrious career in the United States Senate. Fellow senators and pundits have lined up to offer stories and anecdotes about Senator Kennedy’s legislative skills. Senator Kennedy seemed to be singularly adept at the art of reaching across the aisle and working with Republicans in order to get “important” legislation passed. All to often, in my opinion, it lead to incrementally larger government, higher taxes, and redistribution of wealth, but politics aside, Senator Kennedy provided long and outstanding service to the country.

As I rode past the white gravestones of the Ft. Sam National Cemetery, it struck me that Senator Kennedy’s service was of a different kind than SSG Bowen’s. Senator Kennedy’s service involved suits and ties and press conferences. SSG Bowen’s service involved desert camouflage and after actions reports. Senator Kennedy took tax payer-funded congressional junkets to Europe and South America. SSG Bowen travelled to and around Afghanistan on C-130s and UH-60’s, also at the expense of the taxpayer. Senator Kennedy held power lunches in fancy restaurants and attended cocktail parties with the Washington elite. SSG Bowen ate MREs heated up on the hood of a HUMVEE while dreaming of the next opportunity he’d have to share a beer with the guys in his platoon. Senator Kennedy was born into a wealthy and privileged family and didn’t seem to have to take responsibility when he strayed off the straight and narrow. SSG Bowen was born into a middle class family and like his comrades, had to answer to the Code of Conduct and the Uniformed Code of Military Justice. Senator Kennedy devoted most of his long life to the senate. SSG Bowen selflessly gave his short life to his countrymen. Senator Kennedy was famous for compromising with the opposition in order to pass legislation. Just like in the song, SSG Bowen stood at the gates of hell and never backed down.

People serve in their own manner. Police, firefighters and first responders do their thing each and every day, 24/7/365. Rarely do we show them the appreciation they deserve. Volunteer poll workers, most often senior citizens, do a thankless job, but one critical to our democracy. Every day, millions of caring people volunteer their time at hospitals, rest homes, meals on wheels, churches, civic organizations, etc. Selfless service to others is one of the things that truly separates our country from so many others.

But as I watch the countless hours devoted to memorializing the service of a career politician, I can’t help but think that some of that attention and adoration might be misplaced.

SSG Bowen stood at the gates of hell and he didn’t back down. His comrades are standing there right now. As I tuck my children into bed each night, I thank God that they won’t back down either.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

If this doesn't shock the daylights out of you, we are truly on the verge of facist America. Having listened to the vile, putrid attacks against the Bush administration for the last eight years, the tables have surely turned.

This may appear, at first blush, to be amusing, but it is deadly serious. I watched the left, during the Bush administration, say and spew the vilest things - speech protected under the first amendment. You never heard the right, the GOP, the Bush administration say boo. This is hope? This is change? This is fascism.

Vid hat tip Martin. This took place at Democrat Jim Moran's town hall meeting. No pictures on signs. Got that? You will be charged with trespassing.

It's been a summer of name calling, as Americans speak out in opposition to government run health care and nationalizing major industries. Opponents have been labeled unAmerican by Pelosi and Hoyer, brownshirts, a paid (angry) mob, political terrorists, and compared to the Klu Klux Klan.

Now, flyers depicting "Teabaggers" as KKK hanging Obama were found on cars after a Townhall meeting. Ironically, the cartoonist is Mike Flugennock, a far left political cartoonist.

RedState reports:

This Is How They See You (Image may be NSFW)By Moe Lane, August 29, 2009

I apologize in advance for the ugly and graphic nature of the image that will be available for viewing after the fold: I would prefer not to show it, but unfortunately somebody decided that it was suitable for distribution after the Reston, VA Town Hall - and I can’t actually talk about it without showing it.

…Yeah. See also The Blog Prof, Weasel Zippers, American Power, Gateway Pundit, and Marooned in Marin: the image comes from Restonian, which is claiming a virtuous motive in removing from the flyer the URL of the group that disseminated this racist garbage - a claim which I personally don’t believe for a second, although you’re welcome to check their archives and make up your own minds. Still, even Restonian concedes that the URL that was removed from the original flyer is for an anti-Tea Party website (I screenshotted that admission, by the way); and the ‘artist’ is one Mike Flugennock, a Hard Lefty (and, apparently, a closet racist) from the area. I see no reason to pretend that it was anything except an attack on the people opposing health care rationing.

I present all of this for educational purposes, not ideological. You need to know what they think of you. Particularly when they sort of don’t want you to know what they think of you.

Moe Lane

PS: I’d be fascinated to see the original URL associated with this flyer, myself.

In 1952, during the Korean War, the United Steel Workers of America had gone out on strike. The union was demanding pay increases beyond what steel firms said they could afford to pay, unless they were to raise prices beyond what would be approved by the government’s Wage Stablization Board (set up for the war to attempt to keep costs in line despite inflationary government policies).

President Harry Truman, Democrat, unilaterally declared the steel firms to be at fault for the strikes, which were set to cripple Defense contractors’ ability to keep the war supplied. So, the President nationalized America’s steel manufacturing plants with the plan of dictating his own terms to the unions, appeasing them as part of his political base, while keeping afloat an early front of the Cold War.

The Supreme Court two months later shut the President down, denying the administration’s claim that he had broad implied or residual powers to do whatever he wanted as President of the United States. Had he relied on the Selective Service Act to take control, he might have gotten away with it, but he refused to use it because it had too many pesky controls to protect property rights. Had he relied on Taft-Hartley to stop the strikes, he might have gotten away with it, but he refused to use it because the unions were his allies.

S. 773, a bill by West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Democrat, has a 55-page draft bill that would create new “emergency” powers for the President, a ‘cybersecurity’ Enabling Act of sorts, that would give the President the authority broad powers over any “non-governmental” computer networks, whether public or private, that are declared by the President to be “critical.”

On its own, this power is already dangerous, and even frightening to anyone in the industry. Whether large or small, we all who operate on the Internet invest in online capital. Large firms spend billions on the task, and now the Democrats want to nationalize it at the drop of a hat. This is threatened theft on a scale not usually seen outside banana Republics.

These powers extend beyond declared emergencies, however. Rockefeller’s bill would immediately grant the ability of the government to control hiring and firing of jobs related to these so-called critical networks, because the President could unilaterally declare that jobs related to those networks would be required to be filled by people certified to the task by the government. And much like with the car dealerships, the Obama administration is fully expected to use its power to favor political allies for these jobs by granting or denying certification depending on your level of donations to Obama for America or the Democratic National Committee.

Elections have consequences, and all those people who told themselves that Democrats would leave the Internet alone now have a lesson to learn regarding letting the scorpion of big government onto their backs. But it is not too late, and we all now can unite against the socialist threat now looming over the Internet.

Friday, August 28, 2009

As if there needed to be another argument against the job killing Cap and Tax bill, the idea of paying foreign countries for their signature on this bill with our tax dollars is mind boggling.

The Heritage Foundation reports:

Outsourcing Your Tax DollarsAugust 28, 2009

During a July 7th Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on the 1,500 page Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade legislation, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) got Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson to admit that “U.S. action alone will not impact CO2 levels.” This is 100% consistent with all the best science which shows that the carbon reductions under Waxman-Markey will not affect global temperatures in any material way. For example a recent study of cap-and-trade by MIT concluded:

The different U.S. policies have relatively small effects on the CO2 concentration if other regions do not follow the U.S. lead…The Developed Only scenario cuts only about 0.5 °C of the warming from the reference, again illustrating the importance of developing country participation.

So where are all these billions of dollars going to come from? You, of course. A recently leaked document from the G20 Climate Finance Experts Group refers to “carbon market finance,” as a major source of the “hundreds of billions of dollars per year” delivered to the rest of the world by the U.S. and the other wealthier nations. So what is “carbon market finance?” It’s what Waxman-Markey proponents call cap and trade even though, in reality, all it is a huge new energy tax.

But the story gets even better. Remember all those EPA and CBO estimates purporting to show how little the Waxman-Markey energy tax would hurt consumers? Well, besides the fact that they all ignored the cost of lost GDP from higher energy taxes, the CBO and EPA also assumed that Waxman-Markey would rebate all of its tax proceeds back to consumers. For example, the CBO estimates Waxman-Markey would raise taxes on Americans by $872.8 billion between 2010-2019 but then also assumes that the federal government will immediately turn around and spend $863.8 billion.

It is unconscionable that the CIA is under attack while we are in the midst of 2 wars. It is unconscionable the CIA is under attack for doing their job in keeping us safe after the devastating terrorists attack on American soil nearly 8 years ago. Has it been so long ago that we have forgotten our fear, and sense of urgency to prevent future attacks?

Pat Buchanan writes:

The Get-Cheney Squadby Patrick J. Buchanan, August 28, 2009

"Men sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

George Orwell's truth comes to mind as one reads that Eric Holder has named a special prosecutor to go after the "rough men" who, to keep us sleeping peacefully at night, went too far in frightening Khalid Sheik Muhammad, the engineer of the September massacres.

Yet, it seems now indisputable that those CIA interrogators, with their rough methods, got vital intelligence that saved American lives, as Dick Cheney has consistently contended.

According to The Washington Times, which reviewed the newly declassified CIA documents, those interrogators "produced life-saving intelligence that disrupted numerous terrorist plots."

They elicited the names of al-Qaida agents who planned anthrax attacks on Westerners and a massive bombing of Camp Lemonier, the U.S. base in East Africa. They got the names of 70 recruits al-Qaida deemed "suitable for Western attacks" and of the men who made the bomb used on the U.S. consulate in Karachi.

Iyman Faris, an al-Qaeda sleeper agent and truck driver in Ohio, is serving 20 years because of information the CIA got from KSM and associates. Other operations aborted include al-Qaida "plots to fly airliners into buildings on the West Coast, setting off bombs in U.S. cities and planning to employ a network of Pakistanis to target gas stations, railroad tracks and the Brooklyn Bridge."

What were the "inhumane" techniques CIA interrogators used to uncover these plans for the mass murder of Americans?

"Interrogators lifted one detainee off the floor by his arms, while they were bound behind his back with a belt," reports The Washington Post. "Another interrogator used a stiff brush to clean a detainee, scrubbing so roughly that his legs were raw with abrasions. Another squeezed a detainee's neck at his carotid artery until he began to pass out."

The CIA, we are told, used mock executions to frighten captives and threatened to kill KSM's children and rape his mother. Power drills were brandished in interrogation rooms.

Were any children killed? No. Was anyone's mother raped? No. Was the power drill used? No.

Was anyone executed in front of a witness to make him talk? No. It was faked, as Sean Connery faked it in "The Untouchables" to get an underling to blab to Eliot Ness, aka Kevin Costner, about how he could take down Al Capone's mob.

As for threatening to kill the children of our enemies, we did not do that in "The Good War." Instead, what we did was kill them in the thousands every night in air raids over Germany and Japan.

In the Tokyo firestorm of February 1945, the Dresden raid in March, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, we killed grandparents, mothers, fathers, wives, sisters, daughters and sons of the enemy in the scores of thousands on each of those days.

Can it be that the same United States that honored Col. Paul Tibbets and put his Enola Gay, which dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, on display in its Air and Space Museum is going to prosecute a CIA agent for faking an execution and threatening, but never intending, to kill the children of Khalid Sheik Muhammad?

Why is Barack Obama allowing these prosecutions to proceed?

In 2004, career lawyers at Justice looked over the same reports and concluded that prosecutions would not serve the national interest. Obama has himself said he wants to move on.Now, he and Holder may not like what was done back then, but who does? And where is the criminal intent? These agents are not sadists. They were trying to get intel to abort plots and apprehend terrorists to prevent them from killing us. And they succeeded. Not a single terrorist attack on the United States in eight years.

Do we the people, some of whom may be alive because of what those CIA men did, want them disgraced, prosecuted and punished for not going strictly by the book in protecting us from terrorists?

In its lead editorial Tuesday, "Following the Torture Trail," The Washington Post declaims, "The real culprits in this sordid story are the higher-ups, starting with former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Richard Cheney who led America down the degraded path of state-sponsored torture."

But why is Obama yielding to the clamor of a left that will not be satiated until Cheney and Bush are indicted as Class A war criminals? Is that in the national interest? Is it in Obama's interest to tear his country apart to expose and punish these CIA agents?

In the 1960s, Robert Kennedy and the boys at Justice set up a "Get Hoffa Squad" to take down Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. It was a vendetta that succeeded.

This vendetta will not. For, on the issue of national security, as Barack will painfully discover, he is not more trusted than Dick Cheney or the rough men at the CIA who did the harsh interrogations of terrorists, to keep us sleeping peacefully at night.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free." Ronald Reagan

An excellent piece in PajamasMedia describes the long & successful process of dumbing down America through the school system:

Obama’s Civilian Troops Were Trained by AyersObama's election and the health care reform push would have been impossible without the dumbing down of academia.By Mary Grabar, August 27, 2009

The blitzkrieg of changes that Obama has implemented — the nationalization of auto companies and banks, the demonization of the bourgeois (auto executives, physicians in private practice, insurance executives), the arm-twisting behind closed doors — are of the kind we’d expect of Hugo Chavez, pal of Obama’s pal, Bill Ayers.

But young people, educated in a system that allowed Bill Ayers to become a “distinguished professor” of education, heed the siren call of Obama’s Organizing for America and MoveOn.org. I saw them collecting information and signatures at one of the fake town halls given by my Democrat Congressman Hank Johnson here in Atlanta on August 10.

In fact, it seemed that out of the tiny percentage of people in their late teens or twenties at this gathering, which exceeded the overflow hall showing the proceedings on screen, most were Obama zombies. None would give their full names to me; some were from outside the district. All insisted that they had signed “nondisclosure agreements.” One hostile girl with pink hair admitted to being paid for her efforts. One young man who gave his first name only smirked when I told him I write for Pajamas Media: “Isn’t that the place that had Joe the Plumber on?”

Obama would like us to forget about Ayers, whom he dismissed as some “English professor.” We are to forget that they attended New York colleges at the same time, ended up in Ayers’ hometown of Chicago, sat on educational foundations together, had mutual friends, and held a kick-off political campaign in Ayers’ home.

Obama would also like us to ignore the language written by a euthanasia society that calls for five-year reviews of “end-of-life” plans in HR 3200. Those who rightfully see such provisions for what they are endure ridicule, much in the manner of those who condemned communists. Those writing op-eds about life “not worth living” today display a lack of awareness that their language mimics the language of Nazi doctors who got their practice runs for the Holocaust by quietly gassing the very young, the mentally challenged, and the handicapped in the privacy of their hospitals. They too had medical “review committees” of white-coated bureaucrats signing orders for death.

But history teachers will tell you that even Advanced Placement high school students are under the illusion that the concentration camps were places that the U.S. sent its own Japanese citizens.

When I write about Bill Ayers, I am often greeted with the retort that the focus on one kooky professor is a waste of time, that we have bigger problems.

But were it not for the “Destructive Generation” instantiating themselves in our schools, the election of Barack Obama would not have been possible. Had we had a generation who understood history, we would have had voters who understood the vacuity of his rhetoric and the implications of “spreading the wealth.” They would have understood how his writings on Saul Alinsky displayed his propensity for stirring up racial animus, demonizing the opposition, and threatening executives with “pitchfork” mobs (that he would rouse up). We would have seen how his teaching a course on “critical race theory” would naturally lead to a nomination of a Supreme Court justice who sees herself as a “wise Latina woman” who can “empathize.”

They would have seen that Obama’s alliance with Bill Ayers, who has been working on behalf of “education” in Venezuela, would lead to a cozy meeting with Hugo Chavez. While Venezuelans protest against a government takeover of the schools, we allow Bill Ayers to spread his poison to future teachers while paying him an annual salary of $126,000.

Like South American dictators who promise peasants a few hectares through redistribution, Obama promises such things as “free” medical care, education, and new cars to his followers. Like Chavez, he appeals to the peasants — literally the illegal ones streaming into the country, promising rights of citizenship.

The historian Richard Pipes notes that the Russian revolution succeeded in large part because of the uneducated peasants. And in this country, the early communists targeted immigrants who spoke no English and were unacquainted with American values.

Today’s communists, like Bill Ayers, work in our schools aiming to keep American students in the same level of ignorance and tribalism as the peasants of Russia and South America.

They began their nefarious deeds in the 1960s. With help from the Soviet Union, they fomented hatred of the United States and then successfully groomed a generation to colonize the schools. The SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), of which Ayers was a member, spelled out their strategies in their position paper, the Port Huron Statement. Employing the old Soviet strategy of “boring from within,” they focused on “an overlooked seat of influence”: the university. Divested of their history, literacy, and ability to reason, their students became the mob that elected Barack Obama.

I am not the only one to witness the increasing inability of college students to reason. Douglas G. Campbell, writing in Academic Questions, relates a common experience in the college classroom. The former career military officer, while discussing military culture, was accused of being “brainwashed by the military” by a student who had no experience in the military or knowledge of it. When asked what informed her opinion, she could not reply. In frustration she repeated the classroom mantra, that she was “entitled to my opinion.” When she broke into tears, accusing Campbell of being a Nazi, she gained the sympathy of her classmates. I’ve had a similar resistance to facts and logic in the classroom.

Campbell cites a couple of books on pedagogy that he had to read in a mandatory program at his college. One by Stephen D. Brookfield, Becoming a Critically Reflective Thinker, advocates a Marxist methodology called “critical pedagogy,” by which “students are helped to break out of oppressive ways of thinking and acting that seem habitual but that have been imposed by the dominant culture.”

The “dominant culture” that Brookfield refers to is the Western one. It relies on standards of truth, objectivity, and fairness. It uses the syllogism, where a premise based on truth leads logically to a conclusion. Our “dominant culture” also emphasizes fairness, such as notions that people of a certain race are not inherently wiser or that those who demonstrate merit should be rewarded.

But in our schools, from kindergarten through graduate school, a different culture reigns. From textbooks, to teaching strategies that encourage collective thinking, to dorm room indoctrination, students are pressured to give up independent, logical thought for nonsensical theories, group work, and consensus building. They are bullied emotionally and pressured with grades to adopt the thinking of the classroom. At the same time, they are denied exposure to the Western heritage.

Bill Ayers, much admired by fellow education professors, eschews content and discipline. He bristles at the idea of being restricted by a curriculum, policies, or assessments and openly uses his classroom to promote his radical communist views by assigning books that promote communism. His own books are used by professors in colleges of education. A tamer version of his pedagogy is popular among teachers, who while not openly advocating communism nonetheless focus on “social justice” issues through collective thinking.

Conservatives who have seen through these techniques but simply dismiss these kooky professors do so at their peril. They may be protecting their own children through homeschooling and private education, but they are reaping the products in the voting mobs that elected Barack Obama.

Now we are faced with, among other things, the prospect of “death panels” under socialized medicine.

The health care town halls and tea party rallies are the pulse signs of an American spirit that has not yet died. But these gatherings are populated largely by those who are in, or approaching, the age of mandatory “end-of-life” counseling proposed in HR 3200.

As a baby boomer, I viewed such a session at my “town hall meeting” as a group of fresh-faced Emory medical students debated an experienced orthopedic surgeon.

One young student, a Doogie Howser type, cocksure in his white coat, was convinced that he was on the right side of compassion and “social justice.”

The surgeon, who was not wearing the doctor’s coat, argued against the government encroachment into the relationship between doctor and patient. He admitted that there are problems with health care currently, but argued quite logically and ethically against the extreme measures of the bill. He cited his experience of working in a government (VA) hospital. He said that competition means good service for patients and gave examples and reasons.

The med student accused him of “trying to make a profit.” (The good doctor had said he treats at least a couple of children of illegal aliens a month for free.)

As the surgeon understandably became increasingly frustrated in the debate, the med student used techniques that are now common in the classroom: emotional sabotaging tactics under the cover of “conflict resolution.” Acting as if the surgeon were an unreasonable child (or more likely senile), the student said, “Let me crystallize this …” The tone was condescending. It would have been a comic scene were it not for the fact that this future doctor does not seem to understand how HR 3200 violates the Hippocratic Oath.

(The several doctors who spoke at the tea party rally in Atlanta on August 15 all invoked the Hippocratic Oath. But they were all middle-aged. No medical students showed up.)

The medical student at the town hall did say to the experienced orthopedist, “I respect your opinion,” but he dismissed the opinion.

Obama himself on television and through expansion of government programs, like Americorps, encourages our young people to “volunteer” in “community service” programs paid for with tax dollars.

While the economy tanks, the government job sector is growing. Young people are encouraged to educate themselves for jobs in nonprofits and government agencies. They build up their academic resumes with “community service” that does nothing for their intellectual growth.

The visions of modern-day brown-shirted civilian troops have predictably been dismissed as evidence of overworked imaginations of right-wing extremists.

Dec.20, 2007: Gwen Kopechne, mother of Mary Jo, dies alone in a nursing home 38 years after living with her only child's death

This piece is from PajamasMedia:

We Get the Leaders We DeserveThe people deserve blame for giving Kennedy's homicide a pass.By Andrew Klaven, August 26, 2009

At the age of 38, Senator Ted Kennedy drove his Oldsmobile off a bridge into a pond. He escaped the car, leaving 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne trapped inside under seven feet of water. I would guess he was drunk; I would guess she was his adulterous date for the day. He denied both accusations.

What was undeniable was that he waited ten hours to report the incident – all the long night. Even the next morning, he was seen chatting casually with an acquaintance at his hotel. There is evidence to suggest that Miss Kopechne was alive in the car for quite some time after the accident, breathing the last of the air caught inside.

Bad men can support good ideas. We can’t condemn liberalism itself on the strength of Kennedy’s character. It’s only a coincidence that the man who left Miss Kopechne to tap, tap, tap against the Oldsmobile window while he apparently tried to establish an alibi and otherwise cover his ass also spent a lifetime promoting policies that have endangered our freedoms, harmed our economy and damaged the lives of the poor people they were presumably intended to help.

What is no coincidence, however – what is criminal really – is that such a man spent nearly fifty years in the Senate of the United States. Fifty years in office – or 47 plus, I think it was – but in any case, longer than the longest-serving tyrant-for-life in the worst third world dirt puddle you can think of. Whose fault is that? Ours, of course. We the people allowed the courts to give his homicide a pass – he got a two month suspended sentence for leaving the scene of an accident. We voted him back into office again and again, knowing what he was. Blame Massachusetts alone if you want to, but we, all of us, have failed to demand the term limits and the end to gerrymandering that would keep our representatives from devolving into entrenched toadies of special interests and unscrupulous slaves of their own ideologies. We have failed to demand the reforms that would keep our republic vital and true to its ideals. We get the leaders we deserve and God help us.

It has been more than 40 years since the tragic death of Mary Jo Kopechne on July 18, 1969. She was only 28 years old, and was a dedicated civil rights activist and political talent with a bright future.

An op-ed in VANITY FAIR:

WHERE IS MARY JO KOPECHNE'S EULOGY?By Henry Rollins, August 27, 2009

Not Far Under The Surface. Let’s say I am driving myself and a passenger in my car at night. I accidentally drive off a bridge into the water below. I am able to get out of the submerged vehicle but for some reason, I am unable to free the passenger.

I gather two friends, a relative and my lawyer and return to the scene. We are unable to rescue the person trapped in the car. Several hours later, myself nor the two others I took to the site have called the authorities. In fact, it’s two fishermen who find the car the next morning as even then, no one has been called to the scene.

The car is removed from the water and it is determined that its occupant is dead. This tragic incident is made international news by my circumstances. I am very well known, a United States senator. My family is incredibly powerful. There are allegations that I had been drinking heavily hours up to the time I got into the vehicle with the passenger. I deny this for the rest of my life.

That at no point did I make an attempt to call for rescue would probably be considered by many people to be outrageous and horrible, perhaps a crime that would carry a prison sentence. Can you imagine what the parents of the deceased would be going through when they found out that their 28-year-old daughter died alone in total darkness?

I serve no time. Not inconvenienced by the burdensome obstacle of incarceration, I seek to maintain my elected position. I am successful and remain a senator for the next four decades. Would any deed I performed in that time, besides going to prison for the negligent homicide I committed all those years ago, be enough to wipe the slate clean?

After my passing, would you fail to mention the incident and the death of this innocent person in reviewing the events of my long and lauded life?

As Obama goes back on his word to not prosecute the brave Americans who kept this country safe, another veil is removed. His attempts to erase the meaning of the 9-11 terrorists attack by re-naming it a National Day of Service is also very telling.

Atlas Shrugs' Pamela Geller reports in Newsmax:

AMERICA-HATING OBAMA GOES AFTER CIABy Pamela Geller, August 26, 2009

Barack Hussein Obma lied to us.

The morally bankrupt Obama administration is yet again going after those who put protecting Americans first. “After months of consideration,” Fox News reported Monday, “Attorney General Eric Holder plans to appoint a special prosecutor to examine allegations that terror suspects were abused at the hands of their CIA interrogators.”

This is another vile chapter in the still-young Obama presidency. Obama said he would not prosecute the great Americans who kept the country safe during the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Those heroic Americans kept this country so safe, in fact, that we felt free to elect a post-American, pro-jihad president.

Obama won’t let this go. Uighurs in Bermuda, CIA agents on the rack.

The hypocrisy of this administration is breathtaking, but the implications of such action are very revealing.

The bottom line is that if one only has limited energies to devote to a wide range of enormous problems, why would anyone work to make American defense efforts the enemy? Jihad is the enemy. What was done was all done in defense of this dear country. Saner men would have lined up the enemy in front of a firing squad.

Obama is angry about the treatment of Khalid SheikhMohammed, one of the masterminds of the Sept. 11 attacks, while he is setting up our boys and girls in Afghanistan. Month after month, we are experiencing the highest number ever of deaths over there because, in Obama’s words, “victory is not the goal.”

Meanwhile, Obama has designated Sept. 11 a “National Day of Service.” Matthew Vadum reported in The American Spectator: “The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry. . . .The president signed into law a measure in April that designated Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, but it’s not likely many lawmakers thought this meant that day was going to be turned into a celebration of ethanol, carbon emission controls, and radical community organizing.”

Also on Sept. 11, Obama plans to proclaim the creation of his mandatory “civilian community service corps” — an organization that looks ominous at best: why do we need a stateside army? And is it even constitutional to have one — if anyone even cares about the Constitution anymore?

Sept. 11, what should be a somber day of mourning and reflection (on how the hell we got here), will be the day when Obama — in a celebratory mode — makes his big announcement. The whole thing is depraved.

One has to ask: why did this man run for president? The knee jerk reaction to such a question is that a man (or woman) runs for president because he loves America. It is becoming increasingly clear that Obama ran for president because he hates America and wants very much to indict it.

“There is also no question,” Obama said, “that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world.” I disagree. America going on a witch hunt and prosecuting those that kept this country safe sets back our moral authority. America turning her back on the jihad against women, Christian, Jews, and non-believers has set back America’s moral authority. America electing a radical for a president has set back America’s moral authority.

America electing an America-hater for president vanquished our moral authority.

Want proof? You can find it in the release of Islamic terrorist Abdel Basset al-Megrahi. Evil is unleashed in a world where good has decided to sit out the Islam’s war on the West. Remember, Libyan leader MoammarGadhafi was so intimidated by President George W. Bush, he voluntarily turned over his WMD. I had my issues with Bush when he lost his mojo and caved to the left in his second term, but one thing is for certain: Abdel Basset al-Megrahi would never have been released with a patriot in the White House. Abdel Basset al-Megrahi would never have been released on the first day of Ramadan without a pro-jihad president in the White House. The chaos from the anti-American presidency has not even begun.

Fasten your seat belts.

The man will never stop punishing America for electing him. We will pay with everything good and decent.

Obama is punishing America.

Pamela Geller is the editor and publisher of the Atlas Shrugs Web site and former associate publisher of the New York Observer. Her Op-Eds have appeared in the Washington Times, Newsmax, Human Events, WorldNetDaily, the American Thinker, Israel National News, and other publications.

The $787 billion stimulus bill was pushed through Congress without being read. We were told crisis, crisis, crisis and had to rush, rush, rush. Hopefully, we have learned a hard lesson, as more bills are threatening to be rammed through in the same manner.

There are alternatives that can be done to save this economy, and right the stimulus package, as The Heritage Foundation explains:

A Sobering Wake Up CallAugust 26, 2009

Defending mounting job losses despite his administration’s $787 billion stimulus package, Vice President Joe Biden told ABC News George Stephanopoulos last month: “The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy. The figures we worked off of in January were the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there.” This is just not true. Yesterday the White House released their Mid-Session Review admitting that President Barack Obama’s policies would force our nation to borrow more than $9 trillion over the next ten years.

Commenting on the gap between the new $9 trillion number and the $7 trillion number the Office of Management and Budget used to sell President Obama’s budget to Congress, the Washington Post reports:

The extra $1.9 trillion in red ink mainly reflects the Office of Management and Budget’s adoption of more realistic — that is, more pessimistic — estimates of economic growth and unemployment. White House officials protest that their original, rosier numbers made sense at the time; actually, plenty of forecasters, including those at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, made more accurate calls. This situation was foreseeable and should have been acknowledged earlier.

While it is good that the Obama administration is finally admitting that the fundamental assumptions driving their economic policy were wrong, the reality of our current budget deficit, and what President Obama’s policies threaten to do to our national debt over the next decade, are truly sobering. Heritage senior policy analyst Brian Riedl details the carnage:

- Since World War II, the largest budget deficit recorded was 6.0 percent of GDP in 1983. The Bush Administration oversaw budget deficits averaging 2.0 percent of GDP. The projected 2009 budget deficit of 11.2 percent of GDP would nearly double the post-war record.- The 2009 budget deficit will be larger than all budget deficits from 2002 through 2007 combined. More than 43 cents of every dollar Washington spends in 2009 will have been borrowed.- While President Obama claims to have inherited the 2009 budget deficit, it is important to note that the estimated 2009 budget deficit has increased by $400 billion since his inauguration, and the whole point of the “stimulus” was to increase deficit spending to nearly $2 trillion based on the unproven notion that would it alleviate the recession.- The 22 percent spending increase projected for 2009 represents the largest government expansion since the 1952 height of the Korean War (adjusted for inflation). Federal spending is up 57 percent since 2001.- In 2009, Washington will spend $30,958 per household–the highest level in American history–and under President Obama’s budget, the figure will rise above $33,000 by 2019.- The White House brags that it will cut the deficit in half by 2013. The President does not mention that the deficit has nearly quadrupled this year. Merely cutting it in half from that bloated level would still leave budget deficits twice as high as under President Bush.- The public national debt–$5.8 trillion as of 2008–is projected to double by 2012 and nearly triple by 2019. Thus, America would accumulate more government debt under President Obama than under every President in American history from George Washington to George W. Bush combined.

There is another choice. Not all future spending is inevitable. In the 1980s and 1990s, Washington consistently spent $21,000 per household (adjusted for inflation). Simply returning to that level would balance the budget by 2012 without any tax hikes. Alternatively, returning to the $25,000 per household level (adjusted for inflation) that Washington spent before the current recession would likely balance the budget by 2019 without any tax hikes. So with very little sacrifice, and no new taxes, the government could get its budget under control and the American economy could get fully back on track in three years. Isn’t that worth considering?

With government run health care losing popularity each day, Obama had to come up with a diversion. What better diversion that to assault the CIA -- again. Ann Coulter picks up on this in her 2nd installment on Liberal Lies About National Health Care, so we can stay on point.

Liberal Lies About National Health Care: Second in a SeriesBy Ann Coulter, August 26, 2009

With the Democrats getting slaughtered -- or should I say, "receiving mandatory end-of-life counseling" -- in the debate over national health care, the Obama administration has decided to change the subject by indicting CIA interrogators for talking tough to three of the world's leading Muslim terrorists.

Had I been asked, I would have advised them against reinforcing the idea that Democrats are hysterical bed-wetters who can't be trusted with national defense while also reminding people of the one thing everyone still admires about President George W. Bush.

But I guess the Democrats really want to change the subject. Thus, here is Part 2 in our series of liberal lies about national health care.

(6) There will be no rationing under national health care.

Anyone who says that is a liar. And all Democrats are saying it. (Hey, look -- I have two-thirds of a syllogism!)

Apparently, promising to cut costs by having a panel of Washington bureaucrats (for short, "The Death Panel") deny medical treatment wasn't a popular idea with most Americans. So liberals started claiming that they are going to cover an additional 47 million uninsured Americans and cut costs ... without ever denying a single medical treatment!

Also on the agenda is a delicious all-you-can-eat chocolate cake that will actually help you lose weight! But first, let's go over the specs for my perpetual motion machine -- and it uses no energy, so it's totally green!

For you newcomers to planet Earth, everything that does not exist in infinite supply is rationed. In a free society, people are allowed to make their own rationing choices.

Some people get new computers every year; some every five years. Some White House employees get new computers and then vandalize them on the way out the door when their candidate loses. (These are the same people who will be making decisions about your health care.)

Similarly, one person might say, "I want to live it up and spend freely now! No one lives forever." (That person is a Democrat.) And another might say, "I don't go to restaurants, I don't go to the theater, and I don't buy expensive designer clothes because I've decided to pour all my money into my health."

Under national health care, you'll have no choice about how to ration your own health care. If your neighbor isn't entitled to a hip replacement, then neither are you. At least that's how the plan was explained to me by our next surgeon general, Dr. Conrad Murray.

(7) National health care will reduce costs.

This claim comes from the same government that gave us the $500 hammer, the $1,200 toilet seat and postage stamps that increase in price every three weeks.

The last time liberals decided an industry was so important that the government needed to step in and contain costs was when they set their sights on the oil industry. Liberals in both the U.S. and Canada -- presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter and Canadian P.M. Pierre Trudeau -- imposed price controls on oil.

As night leads to day, price controls led to reduced oil production, which led to oil shortages, skyrocketing prices for gasoline, rationing schemes and long angry lines at gas stations.

You may recall this era as "the Carter years."

Then, the white knight Ronald Reagan became president and immediately deregulated oil prices. The magic of the free market -- aka the "profit motive" -- produced surges in oil exploration and development, causing prices to plummet. Prices collapsed and remained low for the next 20 years, helping to fuel the greatest economic expansion in our nation's history.

You may recall this era as "the Reagan years."

Freedom not only allows you to make your own rationing choices, but also produces vastly more products and services at cheap prices, so less rationing is necessary.

(8) National health care won't cover abortions.

There are three certainties in life: (a) death, (b) taxes, and (C) no health care bill supported by Nita Lowey and Rosa DeLauro and signed by Barack Obama could possibly fail to cover abortions.

I don't think that requires elaboration, but here it is:

Despite being a thousand pages long, the health care bills passing through Congress are strikingly nonspecific. (Also, in a thousand pages, Democrats weren't able to squeeze in one paragraph on tort reform. Perhaps they were trying to save paper.)

These are Trojan Horse bills. Of course, they don't include the words "abortion," "death panels" or "three-year waits for hip-replacement surgery."

That proves nothing -- the bills set up unaccountable, unelected federal commissions to fill in the horrible details. Notably, the Democrats rejected an amendment to the bill that would specifically deny coverage for abortions.

After the bill is passed, the Federal Health Commission will find that abortion is covered, pro-lifers will sue, and a court will say it's within the regulatory authority of the health commission to require coverage for abortions.

Then we'll watch a parade of senators and congressmen indignantly announcing, "Well, I'm pro-life, and if I had had any idea this bill would cover abortions, I never would have voted for it!"

No wonder Democrats want to remind us that they can't be trusted with foreign policy. They want us to forget that they can't be trusted with domestic policy.

The degree of the political problem that President Obama’s “damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead,” approach to health care reform has caused the ruling party in Washington, D.C. is beginning to become clear from some comments made by cognoscenti of the Democratic Party.

In the end, the success of the health care reform effort comes down to trust. A lesson of the raucous town-hall meetings is the sense of panic, the fear that this man in the White House does not appreciate the anxiety that middle-class Americans fear about health care — whether they will keep what they have, whether they will have enough or whether their last years will be spent in painful, degrading poverty….

More and more Obama is being likened to Lyndon Johnson, with Afghanistan becoming his Vietnam. Maybe. But the better analogy is to Jimmy Carter, particularly the president analyzed by James Fallows in a 1979 Atlantic magazine article, “The Passionless Presidency.” “The central idea of the Carter administration is Jimmy Carter himself,” Fallows wrote. And what is the central idea of the Obama presidency? It is change. And what is that? It is Obama himself.

Unlike Carter, Obama brims with energy and charm. His brilliance is not brittle but supple. Yet, another teachable moment is upon him and he seems lost. The country needs health care reform and a success in Afghanistan, and both efforts are going in the wrong direction. The message needs to be fixed and so, with some tough introspection, does the man.

Just how badly has the Democratic health reform effort failed? Democratic Senator Feingold (WI) is predicting no health care bill before Christmas, and when he said the most likely outcome is nothing being done at all, he was met with cheers from the voters at his town hall meeting.

U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold told a large crowd gathered for a listening session in Iron County last week there would likely be no health care bill before the end of the year - and perhaps not at all.

It was an assessment Feingold said he didn’t like, but the prospect of no health care legislation brought a burst of applause from a packed house of nearly 150 citizens at the Mercer Community Center.

“Nobody is going to bring a bill before Christmas, and maybe not even then, if this ever happens,” Feingold said. “The divisions are so deep. I never seen anything like that.”

Feingold reiterated his appraisal a bit later.

“We’re headed in the direction of doing absolutely nothing, and I think that’s unfortunate,”….

Senator Feingold is simply stating what polls are now saying: the public now wants Congress not to act, to, in fact, do nothing at all on health care. No reform. President Obama has moved the public to want to do nothing at all.

President Obama and Congress could always start working on the economy and lowering the now $1.5 trillion deficit, which are at the top of the American voter’s priority list.

U.S. unemployment will surge to 10 percent this year and the budget deficit will be $1.5 trillion next year, both higher than previous Obama administration forecasts because of a recession that was deeper and longer than expected, White House budget chief Peter Orszag said. The Office of Management and Budget forecasts a weaker economic recovery than it saw in May, as the gross domestic product shrinks 2.8 percent this year…

Acting on voters priorities is a radical notion to the President. Perhaps since his own priorities of the Cap and Tax bill and health care reform and expanding the war in Afghanistan have not worked out so well, the President may have to actually work to reduce the deficit and shore up the economy.

It had to happen, as they typically begin to overreach -- and it's a sight to behold. Having scrimped and struggled through a couple of these myself, almost losing my home in each recession, the inevitable always happened, thank God. The Carter administration was the worst, and, lest we forget, we had double digit unemployment and inflation, with prime rate topping out at 21-3/4 percent!

RedState continues:

Democrats Begin Eating Their OwnBy Erick Erickson, August 25, 2009

It was only a matter of time before it started. The Democrats are beginning to turn on each other as their poll numbers sink and Republicans’ numbers start to rise.

“The bill that’s coming through the House, with or without the public option, isn’t good for America,” Adler said matter-of-factly. “We have Congressional Budget Office projections of a trillion-dollar increase in costs that will have to be borne by taxpayers or insurance purchasers; meaning businesses and households. Either way, that’s a cost we can’t afford.”

But it’s not just Adler. Seriously endangered Democrat Parker Griffith of Alabama believes Nancy Pelosi is too divisive to be Speaker.

Rep. Parker Griffith, a former oncologist from Alabama, told a town hall meeting this week that Pelosi is too divisive to be speaker. “I would not vote for her [again],” he added. “Someone that divisive and that polarizing cannot bring us together.”

With one Blue Dog Democrat speaking out like that, it can only be a matter of time before other Democrats also start speaking out against both Pelosi and Barack Obama.

It’s also time to get other Democrats on the record about Nancy Pelosi. In fact, if you are going to a town hall meeting (see the calendar on the right) you might want to ask, “Do you agree with Blue Dog Democratic Congressman Parker Griffith that, in his words, Nancy Pelosi is too divisive?”

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Kennedy family, as they mourn the loss of Sen. Ted Kennedy. And while the left uses Kennedy to advance their horrendous government run health care bill, and eulogize him beyond recognition, my thoughts are also with a few other families.

My thoughts are with the Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork families who suffered as Kennedy demonized them during their Judiciary Committee hearings. My thoughts are with the Mary Jo Kopechne family, who suffers to this day for the loss of their loved one because of reckless actions of Kennedy. Chances are, these families are re-living those days today, and our thoughts and prayers go out to them.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said that both the Kennedy family and the Senate have “lost our patriarch” and vowed Congress would renew the push for the cause of Kennedy’s life, health care reform.

Out of respect for my RedState colleagues, I have delayed the posting of this post for several hours, but it is worth noting that MSNBC had already reported that Reid (always a classy guy) uttered these words before I made it in to work this morning. In other words, before Kennedy’s corpse was even cold. Now, a wise man once coined the maxim de mortuis, nil nisi bonum, and we here at RedState have always made an effort to let even the death of even the most contemptible of our political foes pass without a word of criticism.

However, given that Reid, et al are apparently going to use this fundamental aspect of Republican decency in order to push a political legislative agenda (rather than, say, allowing the family to grieve privately and quietly, if that is their desire), it sadly becomes necessary to wonder aloud whether Kennedy as a man was worth emulating at all.

Dan McLaughlin has already noted that Kennedy’s “personal life ranged from alcoholism to debauchery to sexual harrassment to (sadly, uncharged) second-degree murder[.]“ However, it is also worth noting that Kennedy was personally and politically a hypocrite, that he wilfully slandered men more honorable than he in the service of legalized abortion (and in so doing poisoned the judicial confirmation process in this country, probably forever), and that he built a political career out of provoking class warfare despite having been been born with a diamond spoon in his mouth and having everything he ever wanted handed to him on a silver platter. Insofar as he was a man of any religious faith at all, he was nominally a Catholic, a faith he besmirched repeatedly with the grave sin of scandal: a cornerstone of Kennedy’s entire public career centered upon using his position of leadership and prominence to present abortion (categorically defined by the Catholic church as a mortal) sin as good and normal, to say nothing of Kennedy’s many other failings which those who looked to him for example might follow. In the later stages of his career, Kennedy was not content to rest upon his laurels, but spent most of his time making the world safer for terrorists. Although, to his credit, it might be fairly said that defending terrorists was a lifelong pursuit - Kennedy was supporting IRA terrorists long before any of us heard of Al Qaeda.

Indeed we find precious little to commend ourselves to the life of Ted Kennedy, the entirety of his success and notoriety owing to the circumstances of his birth into a pre-existing family of wealth and influence - circumstances which ordinary Americans (even Americans who work hard to earn more than $135,000 and thus become targets of Ted Kennedy’s class warfare demagoguery) cannot hope to duplicate. It would be better for this country if the Democrats had not opened the salvo of using Ted Kennedy’s legacy as a political football; both because it would allow his family to grieve his passing appropriately, and also because it would not teach the youth of this country that such a man as Ted Kennedy can live the debaucherous life he lived and yet be hailed publicly by a prominent political party in this country. However, the Democrats having begun the process, Republicans should not preemptively surrender the contest and allow his last legislative monstrosity to come to fruition. Ted Kennedy’s legacy, such as it is, is already full enough.

The Hon. James David Manning, PhD called Oprah Winfrey, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and Barack Hussein Obama the "Trinity of Hell", and has made national attention with his disdain and over-the-top comments about the Holy Trio.

TransWorldNews reportsMay 14, 2008:

Manning, the pastor of ATLAH World Missionary Church in Harlem, New York, said in his sermon that Winfrey's success is based primarily due to "open-minded and middle-America white women" and she has turned her back on them by supporting Obama.

"When this struggling actor and radio talk show host had the opportunity to show her love and thanks to all of white America and white women in particular for their love and support of her and supporting a rising presidential candidate in the name of Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Hussein Obama, Oprah Winfrey chose to support one of the boys from the 'hood and one of the boys from the Trinity United Church, disavowing and showing her contempt for the white women who made her the great woman that she is today"

Manning has made national attention with his disdain and over-the-top comments about Obama, something he continued during the sermon at ATLAH on Saturday. Manning called Obama a "long-legged pimp".

"He spent nearly all of that money with white agencies, white hotels, white businesses, white newspapers, and very little, if any, was spent with black television or black radio," said Manning."Barack Hussein Obama played and pimped Warren Ballantine, Michael Baisden, Russ Parr, Roland Martin, and Tavis Smiley, just to name a few," continued Manning. "They gave it up for free. He pimped nearly all of the black media, gave them no money, but they gave it up for free.""Now, this trinity of hell: the Father, the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright; the Son, the Senator Barack Hussein Obama; and the whore girl, Oprah Winfrey," added Manning. "These three, now, they are looking to be the president, the vice president, and the secretary of state. This is the report on the trinity of hell, and I am Pastor James David Manning."

Like Wright, Manning is a divisive African-American pastor who has supported a presidential candidate. Manning is an avid Hillary Clinton supporter. However, unlike Wright, Manning has not been placed in the media day after day.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

As much as the media tries to vilify Sarah Palin, she cannot be knocked down -- kind of like the old clown toy. You punched and pounded him, and he just bounced back. Goodness knows she's been punched endlessly over the past year, but her strength, determination, and will keeps her on top.

PajamasMedia writes:

Palin Flummoxes the Elites with Common SenseNeither the administration nor the media is truly succeeding in refuting Palin's criticisms.By Scott Ott, August 25, 2009

Howard Kurtz, in his August 24 Washington Post column (“Journalists, Left Out of The Debate”), calls big journalism’s failure to knock down Sarah Palin’s “death panel” charge “a stunning illustration of the traditional media’s impotence.”

As you may have noticed, the “traditional” media recently morphed from administration critics into a pro bono public relations firm for the White House. It happened on or about January 20, 2009. Now, they’re flummoxed by their failure to refute a woman they believe has the communications savvy of a pimento.

Kurtz thinks that the mainstream media have done a great job presenting “the facts” about the Democrats’ health care reform bill, including repeated proof that no “death panel” provision exists.

But people like Kurtz fail to understand that Palin does not allege that the health care reform bill contains the phrase “death panel” or that it openly advocates euthanasia. Sarah Palin’s charge has legs because:

1.) The only way to save money in a government-run health system is to ration care.

2.) The majority of health care expenditures for most people come near the end of life, and thus the elderly present the greatest opportunity for cost savings.

3.) Special-needs people, like Palin’s son Trig, who has Down’s Syndrome, also require spending — another opportunity for economizing.

4.) The government, and too many in our society, believe …

a) infants in the womb to be less worthy of protection than Michael Vick’s dogs,

b) Trig Palin’s life to be Sarah’s foolish choice, and

c) the elderly to be a burden on society.

5.) Other governments which run health care operations have a track record of delaying and denying coverage based on the limited supply of medical professionals and equipment, as well as cost-containment considerations.

6.) The end-of-life counseling language appeared in a section of a bill on cost-containment.

7.) The American people don’t trust politicians, and would rise up in unified opposition if the federal government had a plan to take over and run little league athletics, let alone health care, which does involve life and death decisions.

8.) Americans love freedom.

The reason why the “traditional” media has failed to knock down what Kurtz, et al, see as spurious “death panel” allegations is because journalists and politicians ignore the real facts and the legitimate concerns of the American people.

Sarah Palin — invariably portrayed by reporters and politicians as a either a vacuous celebrity or an ill-informed hooftie — has apparently thought through the issues more than most of them. She makes plain sense, while her opponents push an agenda of greater centralized government control. The world has seen the results of such experiments within the past century. They lead inevitably to dependence, despair, despotism, and disaster.

Howard Kurtz and his colleagues should spend less time musing about why the traditional media have failed to persuade Americans that they should surrender their bodies to the government, and more time getting to know some real people.

Somewhere between L.A. and D.C., they’ll find folks whose life experience, grasp of history, common sense understanding of economics, clear-headed rational thought, and healthy distrust of politicians lead them to accept the logical conclusion that government-run health care will strip individual autonomy and place our most intimate, important decisions into the clutches of a bureaucracy that doesn’t share our values and from which we cannot opt out.

Sarah Palin’s brilliant, succinct term “death panels” hits home because it neatly summarizes all that’s wrong with government-run health care. Superficial efforts by reporters to “debunk the death panel myth” will continue to fail, because Americans are smarter than most journalists when it comes to practical matters of life.

Journalism professionals would also benefit from reading some American history, including our founding documents. Our founders had a deep understanding of human nature, shaped by their lifelong, exhaustive study of history and philosophy and of the book that best encapsulates both — the Bible.

Too often journalists and politicians attribute imperfections in American society to a failure of our founding principles, rather than recognizing problems as simply a natural byproduct of finite, flawed humanity that would crop up under any system. So we hear the cry that our health care system is “broken” and the conclusion that government must fix it immediately. It’s a naive notion promulgated by people who think history commenced with their own appearance on the planet.

Because humans fail the omniscience test and have a proclivity to misbehavior, we function best in a free market system where liberty permits escape from the inevitable outbreaks of ignorance and of the dark side of human nature.

Liberty is our natural state. Anything that encroaches on liberty, no matter how benevolent its proponents, must be resisted.

These are “the facts,” Mr. Kurtz. As you marvel at the mystery of how Sarah Palin has hoodwinked America, defeating politicians and pundits alike, consider the possibility that she persuades because she’s smarter than you in ways that matter most.